Friday, September 26. 2014

Dissenting doctors are being intimidated into silence. Here's how it happens.

David Healy | Professor in Psychological Medicine, critic of lack of neutrality on psychotropic drugs.

"Behind medicine's apparent Biblical authority lies an inquisitional apparatus aimed at silencing dissent. It is run by corporate PR and scientific planning agencies, backed by academic expertise, and its aim is to ensure that prescribing doctors keep on prescribing. The heretic ends up in the broad light of day, but the persecutor hides in the shadows.

I should know. In a lecture for the Institute of Art and Ideas, I outlined some of the many things that can be done to intimidate doctors – especially those who suggest that a brand-name drug might have significant adverse events. At the time the talk was being given I was being referred again to the General Medical Council (GMC). Further details of this will be announced soon. Readers will be invited to work out who is attempting to commit the murder, with what, and why.

In this case is it the local health board, clinical colleagues, the relevant Royal College, the GMC itself, one of the major pharmaceutical companies, or even the Government?"

"...........In fact, it is extraordinarily easy to intimidate doctors. One simple clinical misstep can lead to a complaint and an action against a doctor. And clinical practice inevitably gives rise to missteps. Once it does, the GMC can be used as a weapon to silence dissent. Wonderful though the GMC can be, its role is asymmetric. It will not take action against doctors working for pharmaceutical companies who put out grossly misleading information about the lethal hazards of the latest blockbuster drug. It won’t take an action based on its own Good Prescribing Practice against doctors who without seeing the data put their names to articles that encourage doctors to prescribe drugs that are ineffective and dangerous."

David Healy summarises the corruption we are up against in medical care.

"Most Western countries have signed up to TRIPs and TTIP which are aimed at maximising pharmaceutical company profits to an extraordinary extent. These put in place a range of punitive sanctions should a country deem the needs of their citizens outweigh the right to profit of a pharmaceutical company. Aside from the punitive sanctions, if a country does not support their marketing, companies threaten to relocate their operations elsewhere. Countries (viz. the UK) will do almost anything to keep a company operating within their borders – even offering up their citizens as all but involuntary participants in company trials run by doctors whom the taxpayer has educated and salaried. And these clinicians have been told they must partner industry."

- See more at: http://davidhealy.org/persecution-brand-fascism/#sthash.lF7pIiPi.dpuf